Instead, she said, one set of nurses should qualify as children’s nurses with skills in children and young people’s mental health and learning disabilities.

The second would specialise in adult health, with skills pertinent to adult mental health and learning disability needs.

Missing an opportunity

Professor Twycross speaks from the unusual position of being a registered mental health, adult and children’s nurse.

When discussing the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s proposed education changes, to be voted on a meeting on 28 March, she said she believed the regulator had missed an opportunity to go further.

‘Having worked in education for more than 20 years, I think one of the unintended consequences of Project 2000, which brought the training of nurses into universities and bringing in the four fields of nursing, has been we have a generation of adult nurses who don’t know how to care for the mental health needs of their patients and potential mental health nurses who can’t meet the physical needs of their patients,' Professor Twycross said.

‘There is anecdotal information of people being in an emergency department late at night and people having to be shipped down the road to the local psychiatric hospital and patients from the psychiatric hospital being sent to A&E for their physical needs to be dealt with.

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‘My vision for nurse education in the UK would be an integrated programme and that is different from a generic programme.’

Professor Twycross said the strength of a nurse is to care for a patient holistically.

'I think if we are going to have a nurse education fit for the 21st century, we need nurses to be able to care for the whole patient.’